Norfolk revisits police reform proposals
Citizen oversight board could come to fruition this year
NORFOLK — Top city officials — including the city manager and police chief — want a citizen oversight commission that would have the power to investigate police officers’ wrongdoing. The panel also could recommend more sweeping changes in how the police department hires recruits, trains officers and polices the city.
But it’s unclear how much power the commission would have and how much support the idea has among City Council members.
Two months after promising reforms to the Norfolk Police Department, City Manager Chip Filer was back before the council Tuesday night.
He had updates on three fronts: creating a commission that would oversee the police department, hiring a company to analyze and make public the police department’s use-of-force data from the past five years, and forming a mental health crisis team within the department.
In July, the City Council voted 7-1 to spend roughly $1 million to do all three things.
With the last two issues largely settled, Filer focused much of his time on the first, asking council members for guidance on what kind of citizen oversight they want: A “disciplinary” board with the power to investigate alleged officer wrongdoing and make (possibly binding) recommendations about punishment, or an “advisory” board that would have no role in investigating officer wrongdoing but would give members a chance to “see behind the curtain” and gain insight into how police operate.
A third option — what Filer is calling a “community public safety commission” — would investigate officer misconduct “to (the) extent possible,” like the disciplinary board. But commissioners would also evaluate and make recommendations on hiring and training policies, as well as the effectiveness of the department ’s policing strategies.
No matter what model they choose, council members will have to make key decisions about the oversight body, Filer said. How many members will it have? How long will their terms be? Should people with past law enforcement experience be banned?
And the most important: How will commissioners be chosen?
“If it is deemed that this was set up in a manner that cooks the books either direction, you immediately have invalidated the ability of this panel to do good work,” Filer told council members.
Discussion about the three options was limited, and seemed to be cut short by the council’s imminent formal meeting. Aside from Andria McClellan, who said she thought the commission model recommended by Filer sounded great, other council members either stayed silent or didn’t make their stances clear.
Filer said he’d like to start accepting applications for commissioners Nov. 1. That will give those who are appointed a chance to have a say in the use-of-force data project. Working with the company running that project, commissioners will be able to specify what data they want analyzed and what sort of areas they’re interested in probing.
Last week, the city put out a formal call for companies to bid on a contract that would require them to analyze five years’ worth of use-offorce data from the police department. They would have to then write a report with their findings as well as recommendations about how the department could improve how it uses force. Filer said he expects to give the company six months to write its report and create an “online dashboard” where people can access use-of-force data.
On Tuesday, Filer also unveiled what a new mental health crisis team would look like: two supervisors would oversee five new mental health workers, who would team up with five or six police officers. Those mental health workers and police officers would respond to emergency calls. But when they weren’t, team members would also seek out the mentally ill to make sure they were getting the care they needed in an effort to “prevent the 911 call.” Filer’s plan comes four months after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd by jamming his knee into Floyd’s neck for about eight minutes. His death sparked protests around the country, including in Hampton Roads and Norfolk.
It also comes after The Virginian-Pilot requested a decade’s worth of thousands of use-of-force reports from the Norfolk Police Department, reports that show how officers hit, Taser, pepper spray and shoot people in Norfolk hundreds of times every year.
City officials denied The Pilot’s request, electing to keep the reports secret. That led protesters to camp out on a grassy area outside City Hall and the courthouse, a sit-in that lasted six days while they demanded the city release the reports.